Lateral Lunge: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Benefits

Almost every leg exercise you do moves you forwards and backwards. Squats, lunges, deadlifts, the whole lot happen in one plane, and then you turn to grab something off a shelf or step sideways to avoid a cyclist and your hips discover they have no idea what to do. The lateral lunge fixes that gap, and it costs you nothing but a bit of floor space.

It's a side step into a single-leg squat, essentially. One leg bends and takes the load while the other stays straight and gets a long, deliberate stretch through the inner thigh. Runners use it for hip control, lifters use it to shore up adductors that a barbell never touches, and anyone with stiff hips finds it does more for daily movement than another set of leg presses ever will.

How to do a lateral lunge

Start with nothing in your hands. You need about two metres of clear floor and a bit of patience with the first few reps.

1. Stand tall with your feet together, hands clasped at your chest or hanging by your sides. Look straight ahead.
2. Step wide to your right, roughly a metre depending on your height, and plant the foot flat with your toes pointing forwards. Both feet stay pointing the same way.
3. Sit into the right hip. Push your hips back and bend the right knee, keeping your left leg straight with that foot flat on the floor. Your chest stays up and your back stays long; the movement is a hinge and a bend together, not a collapse forwards.
4. Go as low as your hips allow, ideally until your right thigh is close to parallel with the floor. You should feel a firm stretch down the inside of the straight left leg.
5. Drive back. Push hard through the right foot, straighten the leg and bring it back beside the left. That's one rep. Finish all your reps on one side before swapping, or alternate if you prefer.

Muscles worked

Two legs, two completely different jobs.

• Quadriceps (bending leg). The main mover, straightening the knee as you push back to standing. Because you sit back rather than dropping straight down, they share more of the work with the hips than in a narrow squat.
• Gluteus maximus (bending leg). Drives the hip from the bottom position back up. Squatting patterns load it reliably, and the deeper you sit the more it contributes (systematic review of gluteus maximus activation).
• Adductors (straight leg). The inner thigh muscles lengthen under tension as you shift away, which is the whole reason this exercise exists. Very little else in a normal programme loads them through range.
• Gluteus medius and hip rotators. They work on the bending side to stop the knee caving inward, and on the trailing side to control the shift.
• Core and spinal erectors. Holding a tall chest over a hip that's travelling sideways is genuine trunk work, and it gets harder the moment you add a weight off to one side. Research on loaded lunges found that carrying the dumbbell on the opposite side from the working leg raised erector spinae and external oblique activity noticeably compared with same-side loading (load distribution and trunk activity in lunges, Healthcare 2023).

If you want to load these properly over time, a set of adjustable dumbbells or a couple of kettlebells covers it without needing a rack.

Benefits

It trains a direction nothing else does. Sideways movement is how ankles roll and groins pull, and the lateral lunge is the simplest way to load that pattern under control.

It exposes stiff hips honestly. You'll know within two reps whether your adductors are tight, because the depth just isn't there. Unlike a static stretch, this builds strength in the range you're gaining.

Better balance and single-leg control. Most of the load sits on one leg while the other stabilises, so you're building the sort of control that carries over to running and to stairs.

Easier on the lower back than heavy squats. No bar across your shoulders, moderate loads, and the spine stays fairly upright. It's a useful way to keep training legs when your back is grumbling.

One honest caveat: lateral work is often sold as a cure for knee valgus, the inward knee collapse that shows up in squats and landings. The research is more measured than the marketing. A 2025 systematic review found technique training and core strengthening were the most effective approaches in healthy adults, and that hip and lower-limb strengthening alone was not enough to change knee alignment in people who didn't already have a problem (exercise modalities for frontal plane knee and foot posture, Sports 2025). Do lateral lunges because they build strength and range in a neglected direction, not because you've been told they'll realign your knees.

Common mistakes

Turning the stepping foot outwards. This turns the movement into a wide squat and the adductor stretch vanishes. Toes forward on both feet.

Letting the heel lift. If the working heel comes up, you've stepped too far or your ankles are limiting you. Shorten the step.

Rounding the back to reach depth. Depth you buy with a rounded spine isn't depth worth having. Sit back further, go less low, and let range build over a few weeks.

Knee caving in. Push the knee out towards the little toe as you descend. If it collapses under bodyweight, drop any load and slow the tempo right down.

Stepping absurdly wide on rep one. The most common error by far. Start with a step you can control and add width as the hips open up.

Variations

Bodyweight lateral lunge. Where everyone starts, and a fine warm-up movement for life.

Goblet lateral lunge. Hold a single dumbbell or kettlebell at your chest. The counterweight helps you sit back, so this is often easier to do well than the bodyweight version despite the load.

Cossack squat. The full-range progression: you stay in the wide stance and shift from side to side without stepping, rotating the toes of the straight leg up. Our Cossack squat guide covers the technique.

Lateral lunge to balance. Drive back up and bring the trailing knee to your chest for a second. Adds a balance demand and turns it into a conditioning move.

Slider or towel lateral lunge. Put the sliding foot on a towel on a smooth floor and slide out rather than stepping. Constant tension, and it's kinder on the knee of the stepping leg.

How to program it

Slot lateral lunges in after your main squat or hinge, or use them as a warm-up before either.

• For strength and muscle: 3 sets of 8 to 12 per side, holding a weight, twice a week.
• For mobility and warm-up: 2 sets of 10 slow bodyweight reps per side before lower-body training.
• For conditioning: 4 sets of 20 seconds per side, alternating, as part of a circuit.

Pair them with a forward pattern like the reverse lunge or the goblet squat so your legs get loaded in both directions in the same session. A decent exercise mat helps if you train on a hard floor.

Two or three sessions a week that include this sort of strength work fits inside the UK recommendation of muscle-strengthening activity on at least two days (NHS physical activity guidelines for adults).

Recommended reads

1. Cossack squat: how to do it and why
2. Reverse lunge technique guide
3. Goblet squat: how to do it, muscles worked and benefits
4. The best adjustable dumbbells in the UK
5. Workout and exercise guides